


Insects and Flower Crowns

by bluebeholder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Depiction of insanity, F/M, Flower Crowns, Fluff, Hallucinations, Panic Attacks, crazy!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4669901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg and Castiel take a road trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insects and Flower Crowns

**Author's Note:**

> If you are triggered by anxiety/panic attacks/hallucinations (or anything else that goes along with crazy!Cas) be forewarned that this fic does contain them.
> 
> This is set during Season 7, some time between episodes 21 and 23. Meg and Cas are looking for the Winchesters in order to help stop the Leviathans. Fortunately for the Megstiel shippers among us, Meg just can't seem to keep Cas on track.

“What are you doing, Clarence?”

He looked up at her. “I am observing ants,” he said, with the utmost calm.

Meg sighed, and reminded herself not to be impatient. The angel wasn’t entirely there. It would be crude for her to say something sarcastic. Instead, she crouched beside him. “Show me.”

The angel, cross-legged like some sort of unkempt monk, pointed at a small hole in the ground where ants were busy filing in and out carrying grains of sand and leaf bits. “They are quite odd. The bees have some autonomy, but the ants, the ants are terribly linear. They all obey the queen and nothing more.”

“Interesting,” Meg said. She picked a dandelion and looked across the field, tearing the flower methodically into small pieces. For whatever reason, the angel just had to stop the car and get out here, in this big old empty green spot. It was far away from civilization, so there was no fear of being followed, but still. She didn’t like green places. Or open places. She didn’t like the countryside, actually: she was a city girl.

“Here,” Castiel said. Meg looked back at him. She raised her eyebrows at the sight. He was holding a flower crown of twisted dandelions and grass, surprisingly well-constructed. He smiled, head tilted to the side. “You should wear it.”

Meg took the crown gently and set it on her head. “How do I look?” she asked, tossing her hair a bit and lifting her chin.

“Beautiful,” the angel said sincerely. His hands were folded in his lap and he was still smiling.

“Thanks.” Meg couldn’t help smiling a little. “I haven’t got anything for you.”

He blinked a little quicker and—was that a blush? Jeez. “It is all right. Looking at you is more than enough for me.”

Meg’s smile got bigger. She didn’t really see a reason to hide it. There was no one to see it anyway and, hell, a compliment was a compliment.

They stayed in the meadow for a bit. Castiel seemed to attract animals: grasshoppers, butterflies, chipmunks, rabbits, even a hawk. None of them stayed long. It seemed that Meg made them nervous. Seeing the way the angel treated them—speaking to them solemnly and quietly, petting them gently, smiling at them—made her feel a little bit bad about her gut reaction to them, which was much more violent than his.

Eventually she did make him leave. He was amiable about it, small mercies. They drove another two hours before reaching a small town. “How close are we to your buddies, Clarence?” she asked him as she pulled up to a gas station. Just another inconvenience of Earth: even angels and demons needed to fill up the car sometimes. 

Castiel frowned, brow furrowed and eyes distant in thought. “They are still another day’s travel before us,” he said at last. 

Meg shut off the car and dug around for her (stolen) credit card. “I’m sick of driving. You okay with us getting a room for the night?” 

“Yes.” He continued to stare straight forward out the window as Meg got out, filled up the gas tank, and paid the attendant after asking directions to the nearest motel. 

The room was collected without hassle. Meg shepherded the distant angel into the room before declaring that she was going to go take a shower, just because. She changed into some fresh clothes (a clean shirt was one of the biggest perks of a meatsuit, honestly) and took the time to actually dry and brush her hair. Feeling like a new demon, she stepped back out into the room.

Castiel was huddled in a corner, knees to his chest, eyes wild and darting all around. Meg felt her whole body tighten up. “Oh, fuck,” she said, and rushed over to sit on the floor in front of him. “Hey. What’s going on?”

“He’s talking to me again.” Castiel couldn’t fix his eyes on her. 

She grabbed hold of his chin and forced him to look at her. “I’m the only one here,” she snapped. “Focus on me, angel.”

His whole body was shaking. He gripped her shoulders in both hands, holding tightly enough to bruise her meatsuit. “He’s told the Leviathan where we are. He wants you dead…”

“He’s just a hallucination,” Meg said firmly. “Lucifer is in the cage, you’re here, I’m here, it’s all good and dandy here.”

Frantic, Castiel shook his head. His eyes were wide enough that she could see the whites all around, pupils so wide that there was no blue in his eyes. He leaned in close, mouth just beside Meg’s ear. “He’s behind you,” Castiel whispered.

Despite herself, Meg flinched. But she didn’t look over her shoulder, though now her spine was crawling and she was fighting the urge to smoke out and run like a bat out of hell. “He isn’t,” she replied, and stayed where she was. “I promise, you’re just seeing things.”

He trembled and cowered and Meg did the best job she damn well could to keep him from seeing past her. She kept having to guide his gaze back to her, kept having to talk him down from the edge of panicking and blinking out (which, if he did, she would never get him back), kept having to reach out and awkwardly pat his shoulder and tell him that it was all right.

Finally, finally, he quieted and stilled. “He’s gone,” the angel whispered. 

“Good,” Meg said, and let out a shaky breath. Screw these stupid human reactions. Crazy or not, she didn’t need him to see how scared that episode had her. She stood up, helping Castiel to his feet. She tried to be gentle, and let him touch her hands as much as he needed. (As much as she needed, if she was being really honest.) “Come on and lie down.”

She got him into the bed without much trouble and turned on the radio to a low, quiet, Muzak sort of station. Then she sat down in the chair and picked up a book to read. Since sleeping wasn't really a demon thing, she had to have something to do. She had left off somewhere in Chapter Three.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel said suddenly. “I didn’t mean to panic…”

Meg set down her book. If this was like any of the other apologies he’d made, it was going to be a while. “It isn’t your fault,” she said, already weary of the discussion. 

He looked down at his hands. He was so unnaturally still. Even demons fidgeted sometimes, but angels damn near never did. “I know. But I still feel I must apologize. It is not right of me…I do not want to upset you.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“No, you aren’t,” he replied.

She paused. “Okay, Clarence,” she huffed. “I was upset. Mostly ’cause I don’t like it when you get scared like that.”

He nodded slowly. “It is ugly,” he said quietly. “I am ugly when it happens.”

Meg’s throat constricted. Fuck meatsuits and their stupid biological responses. She got up and went to her duffel bag, pulling out the flower crown from earlier. She sat down on the bed next to the angel and carefully put the drying, slightly wilted ring of flowers on his head. “You,” she said firmly, “are not ugly. Ever. You’re an angel, Clarence, you’re always beautiful…”

He looked at her steadily. “Thank you,” he said solemnly. His gaze was pretty damn direct, for a guy who had literally been declared insane. Good. Apology derailed. 

But then it went south again and Meg seriously considered punching the wall. Through the wall. Into the next room. And maybe all the way through the wall after that. “Am I beautiful like an ant or like a bee?” he asked. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, struggling for patience. 

“I mean do I have autonomy as I go about my ordained business? Am I a unique individual, like a bee? Or…am I a creature that goes in a set path and does only what is commanded? Am I a drone? Am I an ant?” His eyes were big and blue and worried and Meg’s stupid little human heart did a painful stupid little flop inside of her stupid bloody human chest.

She took his hands gently in hers. “You’re not an ant or a bee. You’re a butterfly,” she said.

Castiel’s smile was as slow and gorgeous as the appearance of the stars in the sky, or the kindling of embers in a bonfire. “Oh,” he said simply. He looked down at their hands, tangling his fingers with hers. This close she could feel him, the energy of his Grace swirling and curiously touching her own toxic black essence. It made her feel filthy in a way that she’d rarely felt before.

After a few minutes of dead silence with him staring at their entwined hands, Meg asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, looking up at her. He was looking at her directly again, but this time blinking very fast. “I have a question.”

“What is it?” she asked.

A blush spread up his neck and onto his face. “May I kiss you?” he asked. 

Meg thought that damn human heart was gonna stop completely. “Yes,” she said, and leaned forward to very carefully press her lips to his. It wasn’t the kiss he’d given her back when she was trying to kill Crowley. There was no tongue, no teeth, no pulling and shoving or pornographic passion. It was just a kiss: slow and sweet as honey in the dim orange light of the hotel lamp.

When she pulled back, he looked like she’d just sucker punched him, except for the smile. “That was wonderful.”

“It was,” Meg agreed. She could feel her blood pumping faster, demanding more, and she was just about to lean in for something a bit more aggressive when she rethought that idea. “Do you want to keep going?”

“Another kiss like that would be wonderful,” Castiel said. He looked so hopeful and…oh, fuck, so innocent…she couldn’t go in for anything higher-key. A little bit of disappointment wormed its way into Meg’s head, but she crushed it as ruthlessly as possible. For now—with Castiel like this, pretty much unable to really say yes or no, in danger, in the middle of what was quite possibly the second Apocalypse—it wasn’t a good idea. It could wait. So she just leaned in and kissed him again, savoring what she could get of touch both physical and metaphysical, enjoying the moment.

When he drew back after their fifth or sixth kiss, turning back into himself, she let him go. He needed it. She stayed and let him curl up to her side, murmuring inanely about the movement of the stars in Heaven, holding him close for the brief moments she had. Eventually he drifted off—he didn’t normally need sleep as an angel, but whatever nightmare was going on in his head forced him, sometimes, to take a nap. She reached over and turned out the light.

Gently, Meg pressed a kiss to Castiel’s forehead. “Good night, Clarence,” she murmured, and settled back to wait out the rest of the night.

She could still taste honey in her mouth.


End file.
